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WILLIAM BLACKSTONE WILLIAMS, 



LATE CAPTAIX IX THE SECOND KEGIMEXT OK 
MASSACHUSETTS INFANTRY, 



Sunday, August 17, 1862. 



BY JAMES W. THOMPSON, D.D. 



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FUNERAL TRIBUTE. 



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AVILLIAM BLACKSTONE WILLIAMS, 

LATE CAPTAIN IN THE SECOND REGIMENT OF 
MASSACHUSETTS INFANTRY, 

SuNDAf*AuG. 17, 1862. 



BY JAMES W.- THOMPSON, D.D., 



MINISTER OF THE UNITAKIAN CHURCH IN JAMAICA PLAIN. 



BOSTON: 

JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
1862. 



J- 



FUNEEAL TRIBUTE. 



Beloved Brethren and Friends, — 

An unusual occasion, without precedent, I may 
presume, in the history of this church, has opened 
these sacred doors, and drawn us to the house of 
prayer. The hushed and more than sabbath still- 
ness of our village ; this vast assembly, of aspect 
so grave and sad ; the sighs that escape from 
heavy-laden hearts; the group that sit apart, fenced 
in by thoughts and griefs into which none can 
look but God only ; the mournful strains of the 
choir, intermingled with the pathetic, beseeching, 
but submissive lament of the organ, as though 
itself felt an agony, and, at the same time, an in- 
spiration from the Comforter, — all indicate that 
a fearful calamity has fallen here ; that an over- 
whelming sorrow has burst upon us, the waves 



of which can be rolled back only by Him 
whom we are accustomed to invoke in this holy 
place. 

And it is even so. We are stricken of God, 
and afflicted. For a man has fallen ; gifted, gene- 
rous, honorable, brave ; a son of ours, a brother 
too, in whom all the elements of genuine manli- 
ness were mixed in due proportion, and compacted 
into a stature — physical, intellectual, moral — of 
rare beauty and completeness ; a soldier worthy 
of his name, and worthy to be associated with the 
accomplished and brilliant heroes — alas ! too long 
a roll to be called in these fugitive moments — 
whom the old Pilgrim State has freely offered to 
the hazards of the Great Struggle, and whose blood 
has been the price of her self-renouncing devo- 
tion. 

My friends, it is no altar of wood or stone, of 
silver or gold, upon which we lay this costly sacri- 
lice. Rather is it one which quivers through and 
through with human sympathies ; which streams 
with the bleeding affections of a fond and aged 
parent, mingled with those, scarcely less tender 
and scarcely less deeply wounded, of mourning sis- 



ters and brothers ; which is vitalized with the grief 
and sprinkled with the tears of this whole com- 
munity, and which palpitates and thrills with the 
heart-throbs of a sorrowing and suifering, but 
mighty and immortal, Commonwealth. I see in it 
but another form of that altar which the Seer 
of Patmos beheld in vision, whereof he said, "I 
saw under the altar the souls of them that were 
slain for the word of God, and for the testimony 
which they held ; and they cried with a loud voice, 
saying, How long, O Lord ! holy and true, dost 
thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that 
dwell on the earth 1 And w^hite robes were given 
unto every one of them." 

If such the altar, what must be the sacrifice ! 
Of him whose empty tabernacle — emptied of all 
that gave it comeliness and made it dear — lies 
enshrouded before us, let me speak in but few 
words, and those not in the style of impassioned pa- 
negyric, as when the Athenian father pronounced 
the funeral oration over his son who had died 
valiantly in battle, but with -the soberness and re- 
serve which become a frail mortal in the sanctuary 
of God and in the presence of death. 



6 

The sacrifice is no less than the hfe of this 
man, — of William Blackstone Williams, — a 
man of whom it is testified on every hand, that he 
passed over the slippery paths of youth without 
a fall, and came to his manhood, full-formed in 
body and mind, without a stain upon his life to 
make his father sad or himself ashamed. Born 
to the prospective inheritance of ample wealth, he 
scorned the indolent effeminacy which such a con- 
dition too often induces, and successfully bent his 
genius and energies to the carving of his own 
fortune. Of a cultivated taste, with the delicate 
eye and hand of an artist, which he employed for 
the amusement of his leisure hours ; with a mind 
enriched by study, by observation, by travel, and 
by intercourse Avith refined- society at home and 
abroad, — all the accomplishments that became 
his position sat with an easy grace upon him ; and 
so unconsciously, that they interposed no bar be- 
tween himself and those less favored in their 
advantages, — between himself and the humblest 
man he knew. Cool, reflective, sagacious, resolute 
in purpose, not daunted by difficulty ; executive, 
courageous, decided, and withal gentle and pleas- 



ing in address ; copious and instructive in conver- 
sation, — he seemed designed by Heaven to fill a 
not inconspicuous sphere of activity and enterprise, 
private and public, in his day and generation. 
And he has filled it, though in a difierent service 
from that which the hope of his friends and his 
own forethought had marked out for him. He 
has filled it all round, though his career is so early 
ended. When the Nation s hour of peril came, 
and the alarm-trumpet was sounded through the 
aisles of her cities, over her hills and plains, and 
along her rocky shores, it fell upon his quick ear 
as an imperative summons. Though opposed to 
the political party which brought the administration 
into . power, and though stanch in the conviction 
that the success of that party, following the long 
agitation at the North of the disrupting question of 
slavery, had precipitated the Rebellion, yet he saw 
at a glance, he felt in a moment, that there was 
but one course for a patriot like himself to take ; 
and that was, to devote his energies and his life, 
without reserve or stint, to the defence and pre- 
servation of the national existence thus audaciously 
imperilled. Accordingly, he did not wait to see 



^ 



who would go first ; but, obedient to that high 
necessity imposed by his sense of duty and honor, 
he resolved at once to go himself. Breaking from 
his quiet leisure, from the pleasant and genial 
home of his father, with all its attractions and 
endearments, he threw himself promptly, diligent- 
ly, laboriously, into the task-work of preparation ; 
and here we saw him early and late, driving from 
town to town, recruiting the gallant company which 
marched away with him to join the noble army 
of the country, and in which he soon gained such 
honorable distinction as led to his promotion to 
the command of that, not less gallant, at the head 
of which, while bravely leading them in the terrific 
encounter of the 9th of August at Cedar Moun- 
tain, he fell. 

My friends, his best eulogy cannot be spoken. 
It is the silent homage to his worth, of which this 
immense concourse of sorrowing friends is the ex- 
pression ; it is the unbounded confidence, respect, 
and love of his companions in arms, and their pa- 
thetic testimony to his extraordinary merit as a 
man and a soldier ; it is the eternal debt which 
the American Nation owes to his memory, and the 



9 

enrolment of his name in the grand historical obi- 
tuary of the peerless defenders of her institutions, 
her liberties, and her life. 

If such is the sacrifice, — a single sacrifice mul- 
tiplied by the scores and hundreds of equal and 
superior military rank, and by the thousands of 
every grade, who have fallen on the field, or whose 
lives have slowly ebbed away in sickness and 
from wounds, — what is the corresponding cause? 
AVherefore these priceless off'erings ? What is the 
good, so vast and inestimable, of which they are 
the equivalent, or of which their blood is the sym- 
bol of value and the seal of perpetuity ? 

By the cause, I mean the interest, the object. 
Complex, it is yet very simple ; wide as the ages 
to come in its compass, yet touching every man's 
bosom to-day as though it concerned him alone ; 
comprehensive as the law of human development, 
yet narrowed down, to him who will view it so, to 
the question of his own personal prosperity, com- 
fort, and welfare. That object you know better 
than I can state it. It is, in a word, the pre- 
servation OF THE American Nation, with all that 
aflSuence of blessing — civil, social, religious — 



10 

with which it has pleased the Creator to endow 
it ; with all that it is to us in the present, and all 
of hope we have derived from it for our children 
and children's children ; with all its memories of 
the heroic and sainted fathers who laid its founda- 
tions and reared its walls by their wisdom, their 
valor, their prayers, and their blood ; with all that 
it has been to the millions who have already found 
it a refuge full of promise, of gladness, of abun- 
dance, of inspiration to manly efforts and noble 
ambitions, from the want, the restrictions, and the 
oppressions of the Old World ; and Avith all the 
encouragement and stimulation it was, and still is, 
to other millions, panting, with arms shouldered 
or at rest, for those rights which belong to every 
man, as a son and heir of the Infinite Father. 
Name any interest of man, material or moral, any 
dear possession or cherished promise, and it will 
be found included in this object. Property? — that 
is at stake. Popular education % — what becomes 
of it in the general impoverishment and ruin % 
Freedom? — when the nation dies, that disappears; 
and after an age of anarchy, of frightful convul- 
sions, with homes divided, and neighborhoods em- 



11 

broiled in angry strifes, and States rent asunder, 
an iron-heeled despotism lifts its bloody sceptre 
over our children. Religion 1 — ah ! with anarchy 
comes godless delirium of mind and soul ; with 
despotism, enforced uniformity and abject servility 
of worship. It is, therefore, I venture to say, a 
cause the most momentous, the most august, the 
most sacred, that has ever eiilisted the interest 
and awakened the enthusiasm of any people, since 
Christianity, under the Captain of our salvation, 
began its war with " the powers of darkness" for 
the dominion of the world. 

To this cause, with clear perception of its mag- 
nitude, its intrinsic grandeur, its unspeakable worth, 
and with singleness of aim, our lamented friend 
devoted his life. In the perilous work to which it 
called him, he lost it ; but, in losing, has he not 
indeed found it? Could he have fallen in a more 
glorious service, or won immortality by a more 
honorable fate? And is it not some mitigation 
of the profound sorrow of this hour, to believe 
that the disaster which brought him and so many 
of his brave compatriots to the dust was but an 
inevitable incident of that great providential move- 



12 

ment for the purifying of this nation, into which 
he and they had entered with heart and mind and 
strength ? And shall it not comfort us concerning 
them who are still far away on fields where the 
hattle rages, and those others who are enrolling 
themselves to join our invincible hosts, that, if they 
fall, they will not have died in vain, but their blood 
will have been poured out for an object worthy 
of such a sacrifice 1 

There is highest authority for saying, that " al- 
most all things valuable, are, by the law of God, 
consecrated by blood;" and the testimony of uni- 
versal history verifies the saying. All enduring 
civil polities have been cemented by blood ; all 
the great landmarks of modern freedom — Magna 
Charta, Reformation Protest, Declaration of Eight, 
Declaration of Independence — have been sealed 
with blood. Philosophy and science have pined in 
dungeons and bled under the axe before putting 
on their immortal robes and ascending to thrones. 
Religion, in its humbler forms, has " sweat great 
drops of blood, running down to the ground," and 
in its highest expression is crimsoned and warmed 
with the heart-blood of the Son of God. Where- 



13 

fore, " beloved, think it not strange concerning the 
fiery trial which is to try you, as though some 
strange thing had happened unto you ; but rejoice, 
inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings; 
that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be 
glad also with exceeding joy." 

My friends, like our life on earth, our stay here 
must be short. We only pause to slake our thirst 
by that river which flows fast by the oracles of God, 
and then pass on, in solemn procession, to that 
other house, which, equally with this, is none other 
than the house of God and the gate of heaven. 
We stop here at the cross, on our way to the 
sepulchre, to kindle our faith by looking on Him 
w^ho died that we might live, and who left the 
world to prepare a place for all who endure unto 
the end. We stop here to consecrate, by prayer 
and holy song, the death we mourn to the uses of 
our spiritual life ; to seek instruction and support 
in the Book that contains them ; and to bow our 
heads together in lowly devotion before Him who 
"for our profit doth chasten us, that we might be 
partakers of his holiness." Then we bear the 
fallen soldier away to the burial. Yet not him, 



14 

but only that flesh-garment in which his immortal 
being was clothed ; not Am, for the soul, ofiEpring 
of the Eternal, cannot die. The image of God, it 
lives for ever. 

Thank God, my friends, we live in the religion 
not only of the Redeemer, but of the Comforter. 
We live in the light of a gospel which bridges 
over the dark gulf that separates the seen from the 
unseen, and unites us by faith with that multitude, 
which no man can number, who stand before the 
throne, and Avhose triumphant song for ever is, 
" Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the 
throne, and unto the Lamb !" With the consola- 
tions of this religion may you all be comforted! 
And may they be felt in all the strength of their 
gracious eflicacy wherever to-day the mother sighs 
her long and deep lament ; wherever the father 
bows his head for the gushing fountains to flow ; 
wherever the sister sobs her tender anguish ; 
wherever the brother looks with regretful memo- 
ries on the " vacant chair ; " wherever the friend 
sends forth the solemn wail for riven ties ; wher- 
ever there is weeping and mourning for the beauty 
of our Israel slain upon the desolate places of bat- 



15 

tie ! " Who is among you that feareth the Lord ; 
that obeyeth the voice of his servant ; that walketh 
in darkness, and hath no light ? Let him trust in 
the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God." 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



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